Two Radical Ideas Whose Time Has Come Increasing economic inequality and accelerating ecological decline are the two great political challenges facing nations today. In recent decades, many complicated efforts to address these problems have been proposed or tried, but the problems have continued to worsen. Perhaps it is time to address them more directly. Please share this article - Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons. I came of age politically forty years ago, eligible to vote for the first time in the United States in 1980. That was the election that put Ronald Reagan in the White House and, along with contemporary results in Germany, Great Britain and elsewhere ushered in a long period of neo-liberal economic policy in the developed world. The kind of “command and control" regulations that had begun to clean up the air and waterways in the developed world were out, “market-based" environmental solutions were in. High taxes on the wealthy were out, but that was OK: increased wealth among the wealthy would trickle down to poor people, making us all better off.